I’ll declare, I was glad old lady Weller wasn’t alive to see it. She’d had no use for Uncle Benny, she’d hated a nigger, and she’d despised dogs so to where she kept a shotgun by her door to shoot at them if one so much as crossed her cornfield. And here on the way to her burying, where you’d figure she was entitled to have things the way she liked them, here was Uncle Benny chasing a nigger in and out of line, and seven bird-dogs were going Ki-yippity-yi! Ki-yippity-yi! Ki-yippity-yi! I was mighty proud the corpse was no kin to me.

The Old Hen was plumb mortified. She put her hands over her face and when the Ford would swerve by or cut in ahead of us, Doc and me could see her swaying back and forth and suffering. I don’t scarcely need to say Uncle Benny was enjoying hisself. If he’d looked sorrowful-like, as if he was just doing his duty, you could of forgive him. Near a filling-station the Chevrolet shot ahead and stopped and the nigger jumped out and started to run. Uncle Benny stopped and climbed out of the Ford and drew his pistol and called “Stop!” The nigger kept on going.

Now Uncle Benny claims that shooting at niggers in the line of duty is what keeps him in practice for bird-shooting. He dropped a ball to the right of the nigger’s heel and he dropped a ball to the left of it. He called “Stop!” and the nigger kept on going. Then Uncle Benny took his pistol in both hands and took a slow aim and he laid the third ball against the nigger’s shin-bone. He dropped like a string-haltered mule.

Uncle Benny said to the man that ran the filling-station, “Get your gun. That there nigger is under arrest and I deputize you to keep him that-a-way. The sheriff’ll be along to pick him up direckly.”

He cut back into the funeral procession between us and the hearse, and we could tell by them wicked blue eyes he didn’t know when he’d enjoyed a burying like old lady Weller’s. When we got back from the burying, he stopped by Will’s garage. The Old Hen was giving him down-the-country.

She said, “That was the most scandalous thing I’ve ever knowed you to do, chasing that nigger in and out of Mis’ Weller’s funeral.”

Uncle Benny’s eyes begun to dance and he said, “I know it, wife, but I couldn’t help it. ’Twasn’t me done the chasing—it was the Model-T.”

Doc got in to it then and sided with the Old Hen. He gets excited, the way fat men do, and he swelled up like a spreading adder.

“Benny,” he said, “you shock my modesty. This ain’t no occasion for laughing nor lying.”

Uncle Benny said, “I know it, Doc. I wouldn’t think of laughing nor lying. You didn’t know I’ve got that Ford trained? I’ve got it trained to where it’ll do two things. It’s helped me chase so many niggers, I’ve got it to where it just naturally takes out after ’em by itself.”